OTTAWA, Canada — Canadian emergency responders are looking to the London Olympics to figure out how to aid communication among responders on scene.
Currently, paramedics, police and firefighters all use different frequencies in Ottawa and other Canadian provinces, even when dispatched to the same scene, according to CBC News.
Mike Nolan, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Paramedics, is attending the Olympics to see how UK medics are sharing radio frequencies with other responders without getting their signals crossed.
“We want to be able to talk to each other,” said Pierre Poirier, Ottawa’s Chief of Security and Emergency Management. “It’d be ideal if, at the scene, a paramedic and a firefighter could talk to each other.”
Nolan will return later in August to advise federal officials how the emergency radios at the London Olympics can improve communications in Canada.
In May, the federal government announced it was creating a channel explicitly for first responders in order to help combat this issue.